


Comfort

by willows_shame



Series: Peaks and Mountains [4]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Cracked Gems, F/F, Gem Fusion, Grief/Mourning, I'm Bad At Tagging, Lots o' Love, Love, Self-Blame, i love these two so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:13:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28879275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willows_shame/pseuds/willows_shame
Summary: "The second time she formed, after the almost two glorious Earth days spent exploring and learning and watching each other, felt so much, so queerly, like coming home. Even on this curious, troublesome planet, so far from Homeworld, they found a comfort greater than anything they’d ever felt before.Shefound a comfort. Shewasthat comfort."Ruby and Sapphire love each other, and Garnet is that love. It's not always easy, but they're home.
Relationships: Ruby/Sapphire (Steven Universe)
Series: Peaks and Mountains [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955239
Kudos: 7





	Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> hi!
> 
> as promised, here's the next installment of peaks and mountains :) the next (and last) one should be out in the next few days as soon as i proofread it.
> 
> i love ruby and sapphire so so much. like seriously they have my entire heart.
> 
> anyway if anyone thinks a tag needs to be added, plz let me know as always. and be kind!
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own most of the characters but there are a couple mentioned ones (red, aqua, emmy, a couple of the fusions, silver) that i made up. generally though the characters and most places belong to rebecca sugar and the su peeps. i lifted some dialogue/description directly from Steven Universe Season 2 Episode 21, The Answer, so the italicized stuff at the beginning and garnet's first words also belong to rebecca sugar and the su crew.
> 
> happy reading!  
> \- willows_shame

_“Ruby suddenly realized what Sapphire meant. She had known that Ruby would fail. Sapphire had accepted it. But Ruby? Ruby could not!”_

* * *

Ruby threw herself at her charge with a yell, sweeping her out of range of The Terrifying Renegade Pearl’s twin swords, her eyes squeezed shut, her need to protect the sapphire overwhelming. And then—

And then—

“What…”

She opened her eye—eyes— _three eyes_ —looked down at herself, gasped, stared at her hands. “What…?”

_What was going on?_

Two gems—one on each hand. Tall, she was tall, she was—

The rebels disappeared, leapt away in a flower of rose petals, and she—she—

She fell apart, they fell back. And the crowd turned to them in disgust.

Sapphire was shaking, she—she couldn’t see, couldn’t know what was to come because suddenly it had all changed. She couldn’t speak; her diamond called on her and she stuttered out something, she didn’t know what, she didn’t know anything, just knew—

Knew that she had experienced something wonderful.

“You will be broken for this!”

Ruby flinched back.

Sapphire was shocked into motion.

And then they were running.

* * *

Garnet was…

New. She was new. Her existence, so strange even to herself, was difficult. But it felt…strangely right. She could not just _stop_ , could not just go back to the way things had been before despite Sapphire’s elite status, despite Ruby’s so-called uniformity. The second time she formed, after the almost two glorious Earth days spent exploring and learning and watching each other, felt so much, so queerly, like coming home. Even on this curious, troublesome planet, so far from Homeworld, they found a comfort greater than anything they’d ever felt before. _She_ found a comfort. She _was_ that comfort.

So when the Crystal Gems found her, when they welcomed her to Earth, she vowed to never separate, because what could keep her from this wonderful feeling?

But, comfort though she may have been, she was not all ease in an instant.

The first time Rose Quartz returned to their little camp accompanied not by Pearl on two feet but by Pearl in gem form, the first time she saw Rose weep, she struggled to stay together. The second, she frowned, saddened, but the struggle was less. By the third, her frown was more of mild disapproval; she knew, by then, that Pearl threw herself recklessly in front of Rose time and time again, facing far greater—no, not greater, never greater. Ruby had never cared much of pearls. Sapphire had been offered one, once. She’d refused—facing _larger_ gems than she, gems that could shatter her, almost, with a touch.

But the first time they returned with the shattered _remains_ of a gem (“She tried to join us,” Rose said, her tears landing on the shards with no effect. “They broke her.”), Garnet shivered, felt sick, and came apart.

Sapphire hid herself away in the tent Garnet had claimed for her own, the moisture in the cloth freezing the entrance shut. “You could melt the ice,” Pearl suggested quietly.

Ruby shrugged. She was pacing by the tent, waiting. “I…could,” she mumbled.

She said no more. Two Earth months of being not-Ruby-not-Sapphire, of being _Garnet_ , had given her such a deep understanding of Sapphire that it frightened her, a bit. So she waited, patiently, until the frost on the tent retreated from its flap, and then she gently brushed the cold fabric aside and joined…her partner? Her…love? Her other half. “Hi,” she said, only a bit awkwardly.

Sapphire smiled. “Hello, Ruby.”

Ruby plopped down beside her. “Are you…okay?”

Sapphire nodded. “I’m fine.”

She would not tell Ruby what she’d foreseen (pink shards, Pearl weeping), but she allowed the stocky red gem to scoot closer, to hold her hand, and she smiled. They smiled.

She smiled.

Garnet stayed away from the fighting at first, too afraid to show her face. She was not ashamed of who she was, what she’d become, but she feared the ferocity with which the crowd had approached Ruby and Sapphire when their fusion had been accidental, incidental. Now, with it so purposeful, so wonderful, what would they think? Would they go after Garnet especially? Besides, what knew she of fighting in a war?

Then a group of Homeworld soldiers found them, fell upon them when Pearl was still reforming, and in her terror and anger, Garnet summoned her gauntlets for the first time, poofing gem after gem alongside Rose Quartz. Rose smiled at her after, proud, but Garnet shivered again. That was not comfort. That was rage, and it was not only Ruby’s. “I didn’t know I could do that,” Sapphire said calmly when she and Ruby stood before Rose, unfused.

“I…” Ruby said, looking at her gem. She closed her eyes, scrunched up her face—

Cute, Sapphire thought.

But nothing, only a faint glow emanating from her palm. Ruby was frustrated. “If Garnet can do it, why can’t we?” she asked aloud.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, grinning. “There’s so much to learn about you three.”

You three, Ruby thought. No one ever referred to a three-Ruby fusion and its components as “you four.” But yes, Garnet was not Ruby, or Sapphire, or even them both, in a way. Garnet was…

Garnet.

And Garnet discovered that, when not as surprised as she’d been that first time, she didn’t mind fighting. And she was good at it.

So it became widely known—for Blue Diamond had sworn her court to secrecy about the traitorous sapphire and ruby—that there was a third member of the rebellion: the fusion Garnet.

But despite her new purpose, despite the business of the rebels’ lives and the solidness of Garnet’s knowledge that this was what was right, she still could not stay fused all the time, and Ruby and Sapphire, though the comfort of Garnet was still their ideal, found that being apart was almost as good.

Sapphire kissed Ruby for the first time six Earth months after they joined the Crystal Gems.

Ruby was pacing, as she was wont to do—Garnet had faced a platoon of rubies, and one of them had been present at their very first fusion. She’d pointed at them, had spoken of the incident, her face twisted in disgust. “They just don’t understand!” Ruby cried now, the damp ground beneath them giving off steam.

“Ruby,” Sapphire said.

Ruby stopped. Sapphire was sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, smiling up at Ruby, and Ruby was struck, as she had been their first night together, as she had been almost every time they’d unfused since then, by Sapphire’s beauty.

Sapphire thought, considered, looked—but she couldn’t see what the future would bring, and honestly, she didn’t care to. She held out a hand, and Ruby took it, stepping closer, and Sapphire half rose to press her lips against Ruby’s.

And if the ground half froze and half melted, neither of them cared.

It was soon after that night that the first new Crystal Gems began joining them. A bismuth, who was tired of building the diamonds’ palaces on new planets, building their spires and temples and useless hunks of rock. A biggs jasper, a crazy lace agate, handfuls of other gems, slowly but surely. And it was amazing, it was awe-inspiring, to see their little rebellion grow. Neither Sapphire nor Ruby had ever heard of an insurrection on a Diamond Authority colony before, which of course didn’t mean that there hadn’t been any, only that none had succeeded. But this? Their band of misfits, of angry gems who wanted to break free of the rocky molds around them?

They could win.

At times, though, as the rebellion grew, a Crystal Gem would look at Garnet sidelong—step away as she passed—pull back to avoid brushing her arm—and it would take all of Ruby’s fire and all of Sapphire’s calm to keep together.

Some of them hated her.

Some of them called her defect.

And sometimes, they did separate. Sometimes, in her tent, the one place Garnet could escape curious and disdainful eyes, Ruby and Sapphire would come back into themselves, holding hands, and one or the other would cry because this love was so new, so frightening, so hard.

But every time she’d return, stoic as she might have become, because this was the Crystal Gems. This was Earth. She was Garnet and she would never apologize for who she was.

(Though she added a visor to her form, after the combination of her third eye’s sensitivity and the weird looks became too much.)

One night, after a particularly difficult battle, she trembled as she returned to her tent, with the scrapes and bruises she’d obtained, with the need to split just for a moment, but she did not allow it because she was Garnet and she was proud and—

Pearl found her there, hugging herself, still shaking, and she crossed elegant limbs and sat and said, “You don’t need to be you all the time.”

And Garnet glared, frazzled, in pain, but before she could do more than open her mouth Pearl shook her head.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, only a bit crossly. “I _meant_ that separating for a few hours—even a day or two, or longer—won’t make you less Garnet. You’re hurting. It seems—it seems to me—” (Pearl was still fighting, still learning to share what she thought. She told Garnet it was easier, with her. “I never had to answer to a garnet,” she said.) “It seems the issue at the moment might be that one of you is more injured than the other.”

Garnet gritted her teeth. Ruby and Sapphire were present in her mind, far more than they usually were, and they argued for a moment before Garnet managed to reach out her right hand, palm up.

As soon as Pearl saw it, her eyebrows snapped together in a frown. “Garnet!” she said. “What were you thinking? You should have gone straight to Rose!”

“It’s just a scratch,” Sapphire said through Garnet’s mouth, ashamed, furious, proud.

“It’s not,” Ruby said protectively, and that was it, and there they were, side by side, Ruby with her arms crossed, Sapphire with one hand in her lap and her cracked gem outstretched. “C’mon, Sapphy,” she said, and then almost snapped her mouth shut because she’d _thought_ that nickname before but had never said it. She was about to backpedal, apologize, laugh it off, something, but…

Sapphire drooped, the soft, affectionate nickname taking the last of the fight out of her. “I don’t want to go out there,” she whispered. It was completely irrational, especially for a gem as logic-focused as she, but the idea of the Crystal Gems seeing them unfused, seeing Sapphire like this… “Sapphires can’t fight,” a jade had said once to Garnet.

“I’m not a sapphire,” she’d responded.

“I’ll get Rose,” Pearl said.

By the time they returned, Sapphire was curled in Ruby’s arms as Ruby murmured in her ear. “I feel like I’m interrupting,” Ruby heard Rose whisper from the tent’s entrance. She smiled to herself, and pressed a kiss to Sapphire’s hair.

* * *

Whispers, scorn, and contempt faded, eventually. Rose and Pearl ensured its complete disappearance, two years after Garnet first came into existence. They gathered the Crystal Gems together, danced before them, and rose into a figure far taller than Garnet—Rainbow Quartz.

After that, the tide of the war began to shift…slowly. Crystal Gems fused into larger and larger beings, for as they discovered with the birth of Sardonyx, more than two types of gems could fuse at once.

Sardonyx was…an accident, at first. Another battle had been won, and the Crystal Gems were celebrating. Garnet found Pearl on the outskirts of the revelry, holding her upper arms as she sometimes did when she was anxious or lonely. “Pearl,” she greeted quietly.

“Oh!” Pearl jumped. “Garnet. Hello.”

“Where’s Rose?”

Pearl turned her face away. “On a mission.”

Got it in one, Garnet thought, and said, “That shouldn’t keep you from celebrating.”

Pearl laughed. It was her fake laugh. “Oh, celebrating. I am celebrating! I’m very glad we won today.”

“Mm-hm.” Garnet crossed her arms, leaned against the boulder beside Pearl, and propped one foot up. She waited.

“It’s just—” Pearl burst out, then stopped.

Garnet glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. Pearl was still gripping her biceps tightly, looking at the ground with something in her face…anger? Worry? Disappointment? She sighed. “It’s nothing,” she said.

“Not nothing,” Garnet said, “if it’s got you like this.”

Pearl sighed again, huffing out air though its presence in her lungs was unnecessary. For someone who knew that, reminded others of that, as often as Pearl did, Garnet mused, she sure took in air for subconscious dramatic effect quite often. “It’s frustrating,” she said, but would say no more, and Garnet didn’t push it because there were some things Pearl and Rose simply did not speak of. When a Crystal Gem asked if Pearl belonged to Rose— “I am not Rose Quartz’s pearl,” Pearl would say. When someone asked whom she’d belonged to originally— “No one,” she’d say. “Pearls are our own beings. We belong to no one.”

Some pushed.

Garnet didn’t.

“Well,” she said, pushing off the boulder, sorting through near futures. “C’mon.”

“Come on…?” Pearl said, then yelped as Garnet gently took her hands away from her arms and tugged her forward.

“We don’t have to go back to the others,” she said, “but—dance with me.” Some of the Crystal Gems were playing music—a mix of Homeworld songs and the more cheerful, lively music they’d learned from some of Earth’s inhabitants.

Pearl laughed—this time it wasn’t false. “Garnet!” she said. “I can’t—”

“Don’t tell me you can’t dance,” Garnet said, allowing a small smile to fall onto her lips. “Sapphire’s seen plenty of pearls perform and I,” she continued when Pearl began to frown, “have seen _you_ dance. I only hope I can keep up.”

And then Pearl laughed again, and their dance was half motion half embrace, and then—

The light of their fusion called the others’ attention, and though Sardonyx, even in her newborn state, was intrigued by the audience, Ruby, Sapphire, and Pearl were utterly shocked, and fell apart almost as soon as they’d come together. Bismuth waved the others off, and joined them, helping Pearl to her feet. “Three different types of gems can fuse?”

“Apparently,” Sapphire said, dusting off her dress. “Fascinating. Garnet didn’t see that when she looked at dancing with Pearl.”

Ruby and Pearl stared at her. Pearl opened and closed her mouth a few times, then found her voice and said, “I-I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Sapphire said gently, taking Ruby’s hand and tugging until Ruby stood. “It was a shock, yes, but it’s fine, Pearl.”

“You unfused,” she mumbled.

“Yes,” Sapphire said.

“You alright there, Hot Coal?” Bismuth asked.

“‘M fine,” Ruby said. And she was. Just dazed, like…like she had been when she first fused with Sapphire.

“Ruby and I need to talk,” Sapphire said abruptly, and took her hand again. Her cool skin brought Ruby a bit more back into herself; they’d been Garnet for quite a while, and it always took longer to be _Ruby_ again the longer they were Garnet. “We’re sorry we couldn’t dance with you for longer, Pearl, but I’m sure Bis would love to.”

“I-I—” they heard Bismuth say, but Sapphire was already pulling Ruby away.

They made their way to their tent in silence, and sat facing each other. “Pearl is going to feel guilty,” Sapphire announced. “It will be hard to make her understand we aren’t upset.”

“We aren’t?” Ruby asked.

“Are you?” Sapphire asked in turn.

Ruby thought. Was she? “N-no,” she said slowly. “I’m…confused.”

“I am too,” Sapphire said. “We…Garnet is…”

“We’re Garnet cause I love you,” Ruby said, suddenly feeling bold. “And—and cause you love me.”

Sapphire smiled, flushed lightly, brushed her bangs from her eye. “I do love you,” she said.

“So why’d that happen?” Ruby said.

“Rose and Emmy aren’t Unakite because they love each other, not like that,” Sapphire said.

“They’re Unakite because they need to fight. We didn’t need to fight, tonight.”

Sapphire folded her hands, looked up at the tent’s ceiling without really seeing it. Ruby always knew, just from watching her, whether Sapphire was looking into the future or just thinking. Right now she was thinking, and Ruby was quiet. “I do love Pearl,” she said. “Not like I love you. But Garnet danced with Pearl, we danced with Pearl, because we love her, and we want her to be happy. Right?”

“Right,” Ruby said. She felt relieved, for some inexplicable reason.

Sapphire smiled. Ruby was playing with her fingers, and it was one of the most endearing things Sapphire had ever seen. How she loved her Ruby. “I love you,” she said, just to say it again.

Ruby smiled.

She found Pearl the next day. Rose had returned, but Pearl remained skittish, sitting high on a bluff near to their camp and staring out at the ocean. Garnet sat beside her, and said, “Hello, Pearl.”

“Hello, Garnet,” Pearl said. She was feigning nonchalance. Garnet saw, for a moment, for a flash, a scene like this one, only instead of a grass-covered cliff they sat on night-kissed sand, and—

It felt…far off. It felt stretched. It felt like the most _future_ future she’d ever seen.

She packed it away quietly.

“You don’t need to feel guilty,” she said.

“What?” Pearl said, her head jerking back. “I’m not—I don’t feel—”

Garnet rose, held out a hand. “Fuse with me, Pearl.”

Pearl flushed a deep teal. “I…”

Garnet smiled. “I’m— _we’re_ not propositioning you,” she said. “Turquoise isn’t because you and Aqua feel the same way about each other as you and Rose do.”

“M-me and Rose?” Pearl yelped, her voice scandalized and so, so longing. “I—”

“Fuse with me,” she said again, shaking her hand.

Pearl hesitated for just another moment, then took it.

They danced.

Where Garnet was comfort, Sardonyx was _fun_. She laughed to herself, examined her new limbs, and spoke her thoughts aloud, dancing on her own before deciding to find herself an audience. When Rose saw her, she gasped, her eyes bright with excitement, and Sardonyx spun her torso around and laughed again. This time, when they unformed, Garnet was still Garnet, and she and Pearl were laughing as they came back into their bodies. Rose picked Pearl up and spun her around, then picked Garnet up too, and there was a joy in the air that Garnet cherished.

They were at war, yes. They had lost friends, friends who were almost family, to Homeworld’s choice to shatter the Crystal Gems, yes. But sometimes, when Bismuth teased or Biggs wrestled, when Emmy told stories or Red showed them a dance she’d learned from the locals—when Rose asked Pearl to sing and Pearl, boldly, turned the request back on their leader until she laughed and obeyed and Pearl’s eyes lit up with the refusal—they were happy.

And Garnet, with no more side glances, with no more curled lips, with slaps on the back or clasps of the shoulder or excited embraces as common as steps, only rarely fell apart, as the war went on. Because she was stable. She was comfort. She loved herself, loved her components, loved life.

And then they won.

* * *

They thought they won.

They stared around themselves in horror, the last three Crystal Gems, at their friends reduced to shrieking beasts. Pearl fell to her knees, both hands plastered over her mouth, Rose’s shield dissipated and she stared in shock, and Garnet—

Garnet fell.

Sapphire sank down beside Pearl.

Ruby ran forward a few steps, reached out to the chaos, stopped.

Sapphire was blind.

She curled down, hands clutching her head, unaware of her surroundings. She searched and searched in vain, but she could see nothing, nothing, there was no future, there was no world, was Sapphire to be shattered? Was this why she could see nothing? She didn’t notice when Ruby joined her, didn’t notice when Rose stumbled away and Pearl reached out after her with a soundless whine. She sat there, _looking_ , for days.

When she finally looked up, Pearl was gone too. “Sapphy?” Ruby asked softly.

Looking at her was painful.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

Ruby—fiery, hot-tempered Ruby—nodded, eyes dull, cheeks tracked with old tears. “Okay,” she said, and rose.

As soon as she was gone, Sapphire wept.

After another unknowable time, she rose with a stiffness that made no sense with her manifested body. She glided from the cliff where Rose had saved them to a copse of trees, and leaned against one of them, looking up into the leaves but leaving the future closed—she did not want to know that blankness.

She wandered, for a time, and after a few weeks her future vision came back to her, slowly. She could see a few steps ahead, knew when to stop to avoid startling a deer or rabbit, knew which paths to avoid should she wish to evade scenes of tragedy. She knew that it was her comrades who had passed through, had torn apart an unsuspecting animal for the madness of it all. Sometimes, she curled in hollow logs, or the burnt-out bases of great, resilient trees, and wept again, her hands pressed to her face, her body roiling with nausea and exhaustion. She avoided caves—there were too many memories.

She surveyed the planet, watched the locals from small to large to enormous, and wondered if it had been worth it.

Yes, Sapphire told herself, almost angry, because without the rebellion there would be no Garnet. Without the rebellion she wouldn’t have Ruby.

But she didn’t have Ruby anyway.

Without the rebellion, hundreds of gems would not be crazed beasts. They would be back on Homeworld by now, back in their cut out tasks.

She wondered why _she_ had been one of the ones close enough to save. Why had Garnet and Pearl been there, beside Rose Quartz, instead of Biggs or Crazy Lace? Why hadn’t Bismuth been there, why hadn’t Bismuth survived, because Rose said she lost her in battle and Bismuth must have been captured or shattered because she would always come back, wouldn’t she? The Crystal Gems all believed in what they were doing so deeply, saw the beauty of the planet and the tyranny of Homeworld, left behind friends and everything they had ever known for this new freedom.

Why did Sapphire deserve to live sane any more than any of the others?

She should have seen. She should have known, should have found them somewhere to hide, because if they’d all been in some sort of small-entranced hollow Rose could have protected them all. She retched when she thought of this, fell to hands and knees and gagged, because _she_ could have saved them.

The first time she came across one of the corrupted gems face to face, Sapphire froze for just too long, and knew nothing but the inside of her gem for quite some time.

She delayed her reforming. She knew that she was vulnerable, like this; she didn’t even know where she was or how close to falling off a cliff or being stepped on and crushed, but the aimless floating was…kind. Gentle. Dulling.

Eventually, though, Sapphire reformed, and carried herself on.

Would she ever see Ruby again, she wondered? She wasn’t sure if she was ready, yet, wasn’t sure if she ever would be ready. She didn’t know where Ruby was, or Pearl, or Rose, didn’t know if they even still lived. The Earth, now, was as much prison as paradise. Sapphire wished, a few times, that she had never come to this planet. The happiest moments of her life had been here, yes—but so had the most devastating. On Homeworld, everything was calmly neutral—on Homeworld, Sapphire knew her entire life.

Here on Earth, now, after the war, Sapphire still struggled to see further than a week or two. Sometimes, rarely, she’d get flashes. A curly-haired boy, a blink’s worth of lavender hair, a pair of pink glasses. She strained to reach them, to understand them, but they were almost as far as that strange beach scene had been years before, when Sardonyx had first formed, and they were gone almost as soon as they arrived.

So Sapphire moved, never stayed in one place for too long because nothing had the comfort of _home_. Sapphire realized, one bright Earth day as she sat upon the branch of a tree and watched a nest of baby robins cheep at their mother, that she did not know what “home” was, for her. She’d felt it, she was sure—but she could not put into words what that feeling had been, where she’d found it.

Ninety-eight years after the end of the war, Sapphire met one of the still-sane Crystal Gems for the first time since they’d split.

She hadn’t seen it. She’d been following a rabbit, wanting to find its den because she knew in the next couple of days it would be killed by a fox and she wanted to know where its babies were so she could help them. She was watching the rabbit as it entered its den, smiling because she’d succeeded, when there was a larger rustle and the rabbit went very still for a moment before disappearing with a flash of white-brown tail. “Sapphire?” a voice said.

It was almost cracked with lack of use; of course Pearl wouldn’t speak to the locals either. Sapphire turned.

Pearl fidgeted with her fingers, her eyes darting from Sapphire to the sky to the trees to the ground. “I…” she started, but trailed off.

Sapphire felt the pressure of grief and pain, but she gave Pearl a small smile, and took her hands and held them. Pearl was silent too. They didn’t need words.

Sapphire kissed her hands, seeing a time when Pearl would laugh and smile at her (her-Sapphire? Her-Garnet? She didn’t know), then released them.

Pearl left, and the rabbit was killed a day and a half later. Sapphire sat by the den, and coaxed the babies out with bits of fresh leaves. When she held the four tiny bodies in her lap, she cried, as she’d been crying for almost a century. But this was almost a release. She’d seen Pearl, now, in the future. There was a chance, however small, that this silent, chance meeting would not be their last.

Would she ever see Ruby, she wondered two weeks later when the baby rabbits were old enough to hop out into the world? She still wasn’t ready, she didn’t think—but then she thought of never seeing Ruby again, never again telling her that she loved her, never feeling the comfort and home of Garnet—

That stopped her cold.

Of course, she thought, drooping, sinking to a seat and hugging herself. Of course.

_Garnet was her home._

She cried again, sobbed this time, rocked to the beat of the massive drum of time, and searched in vain for the answer. Would she see Ruby again? Would they form Garnet again?

Was Ruby alive?

She was not ready. She wanted, so strongly, to be ready to see her love again, but she was not, and so she wandered and wandered and wished and waited.

She watched civilizations grow. She whispered futures in their ears when they prayed to their gods. She stayed out of their sight but helped where she could—like with the rabbits, though she found she didn’t mind the company of the wildlife where she avoided humans.

The years blurred. She grew more and more aimless. It became difficult, sometimes, to rouse in herself any emotion stronger than mild interest. She would pass a village blazing with flame, and would vaguely remember Ruby’s fire. She would hear humans discuss the tall pink goddess that had blessed them, and would find her lips stiffly upturned at the news of Rose. She would hear music that reminded her of Pearl.

But it was all dull.

It was as she gazed at a sunset over a misty valley that she recognized the apathy. She watched the changing colors, watched the way the mist caught the light and refracted it in a myriad rays of color and wonder, listened to the creatures of the day fade into the creatures of the night. She watched an owl swoop past, a group of bats flutter by, a cluster of fireflies near the ground.

“What a beautiful sunset,” Sapphire said.

And her voice was as it once had been; her voice was the expressionless line it had been when she first spoke to Ruby forever ago, it was nothing, _she_ was nothing, not without Ruby and Garnet and _stars_ did she miss them, oh—

She crumpled with the weight of the sudden crash of feeling, the sudden burn of life, because she’d been _losing_ herself. “Ruby,” she whimpered.

“Ruby.”

She had to find Ruby.

* * *

Ruby did not know if Sapphire would ever want her back. But fiery as she knew she sometimes was, Ruby would wait. Ruby would be patient. She would leave Sapphire alone for as long as the blue gem needed, because Ruby loved and trusted Sapphire with all her being and she would never stop waiting.

Even if that meant she waited forever.

She filled her days, her years, with observation. She stuck to deserts and fodder-less land, where her sudden bouts of anger or grief would not set forests alight. She stopped, meditated the way Amber had taught them, trained herself to keep her fire within.

And she waited.

She spoke to the world around her, the rocks and boulders, the sand. She accidentally created glass more than once, then sometimes channeled her heat into making the hard, clear substance on purpose. “Fire doesn’t just destroy things,” she told a lump of glass once. “I didn’t destroy Sapphire. I saved her.”

She missed her Sapphire, with a sharp ache. She missed Garnet’s comfort. But she waited, and wandered, and wondered if the others were alright. She fought off a small corrupted gem (cradled a ruby and wept over it—“Red,” she whispered through tears), and wondered what it was like for these seemingly mindless beings. Was Red still inside this gem, she asked herself, asked the world, asked the stars. Could Rose’s tears bring her back? Surely Rose would have already tried that. Surely, if she had succeeded, she would have found them, gathered them, told them that their grief was only temporary.

And if Rose’s tears could not save them, was there anything that could?

Ruby waited for Red to reform—maybe, somehow, impossibly, she’d be back to normal.

But no.

She poofed her again, placed a gentle kiss on her facets, and set her aside. Then she kept going.

Ruby loved the stars.

She’d loved them before, she supposed, on Homeworld, but she hadn’t really known what she loved or hated, what she wanted. She was a ruby soldier. She was nothing. _“There’s_ tons _of me!”_ she’d said to Sapphire.

But now, with no war, with time to herself (because Garnet loved different things than Ruby, and now Ruby had years of being herself), Ruby decided she loved stars. She’d lie in a field, or on a hillside, like she and Sapphire had that second night of the rest of their lives. She’d pick out which star was Homeworld, close one eye and squint the other, squish the star between her fingers, laugh at her own foolishness. She connected the dots, created her own constellations, spoke of them aloud.

A wolf came upon her, once, as she sat on a craggy boulder and looked at the moon. It snarled.

“Where’s your pack?” Ruby asked. “You wolves. You’re like rubies, you know? You’re never by yourself.”

But she was by herself.

And so was this wolf.

It snarled at her, again, and she hummed to herself, kicking her feet. The wolf must be hungry. “I wouldn’t be any good to eat,” she said. “I’d just disappear as soon as you took a good bite.”

The wolf sat back, and whined, its ears pressed flat. Ruby smiled.

She named the wolf Silver, for the mineral, for the color of his fur in the moonlight. She helped him find food, that first night, and after that he followed her. She never found out how he lost his pack, but she also never told him why she herself was alone, though she supposed he didn’t care.

Silver died eight years after they met—a blink of the eye, to her, and yet still she cried for him, over his old, old body. He’d been young when they met, when he gifted her his trust, but nine years was quite old for a wolf. Ruby burned his body, hoping she’d helped him have a good life, hoping she’d been good pack.

And then she kept wandering.

Ruby had never been to a Kindergarten, not since she’d first emerged. So the way the land turned gray and somehow even dryer was unfamiliar to her, when she came across its edge just over five centuries after the end of the war. She followed it deeper in, curious, but when she peered over the edge of the canyon and saw the injectors, saw the quartz-shaped holes, she understood.

Ruby sighed. She was tired, the Kindergarten was likely abandoned, and she just wanted somewhere to sit quietly and miss Sapphire.

She climbed down the side of the canyon with little difficulty, and dropped to the ground with another sigh. Now. To find an emergence hole close to the ground, one she could start a small fire in and just sit for a time. Just…stop moving.

Ruby was very, very tired.

But just as she had clambered into a low hole and started a small campfire, she heard a sound.

She wasn’t alone.

Ruby sighed again, and jumped down from the emergence hole, summoning the single gauntlet around her right hand. “I’m ready for you!” she called, a growl in her voice.

There was a clatter as a small—tiny—figure crawled out from behind a rock. It was…just a touch larger than Ruby, too small to be a corrupted gem. “I’m ready for you!” it said, with the same intonation as she’d used, the same dips and rises in its voice.

Then it was close enough to be lit by the fire, and Ruby jolted, startled. “An amethyst?” she asked aloud.

“An amethyst?” the amethyst repeated.

Oh, Ruby realized. This…this must be an amethyst that somehow evaded the diamonds’ blast. She must have emerged late, overdone in her hole and defective. She was…so small. “Have you been alone all this time?” Ruby asked.

The amethyst blinked at her. Apparently, that sentence was too long for her to repeat.

Ruby chuckled. “C’mere,” she said, climbing back into the hole. “I’ve got a fire.”

The amethyst followed her, blinking at the flickering flames, and pointed at them, making a small noise like the sound of wind over dust. “Fire,” Ruby said, pointing too.

“Fire,” the amethyst said.

Ruby smiled.

Over the next months, Ruby began to teach Amethyst how to speak. It was slow going; Amethyst was very good at imitation, would transform herself to look like Ruby, would repeat words after her easily, but when Ruby encouraged her to speak the words on her own, form sentences, they would hit an impasse. But the little gem was happy. She’d show Ruby her favorite rock, her emergence hole (even closer to the ground than the one they took to staying in, in fact almost _in_ the ground, and by far the smallest in the Kindergarten). They’d wander through the canyon, and Amethyst would giggle, spinning from one place another, crashing into walls, generating dust with the force of her dash. They explored every inch of the Kindergarten, played and laughed, and Ruby thought that her companions would love this little amethyst.

Rose would coddle her.

Pearl would teach her.

Sapphire would smile at her.

Oh, Sapphire.

Amethyst liked to sleep, strangely. Ruby figured that, however long she’d been alone, she must have been bored with nothing but rocks and dust to share the world with. Ruby supposed that if she’d discovered sleep early in her life, if she’d been used to it, she would use it too. She slept, sometimes, when she wanted the world to just go away.

But Amethyst woke, one night, and found Ruby hunched by the fire, hugging her stomach, trembling with slow, silent, whining sobs. Air seeped through the tiny hole of her throat, an extended hiss, and she didn’t even notice Amethyst at first until the little gem was practically draped over her, wiping away her tears, babbling in worry. Ruby tried to fight back the weeping, tried to smile to reassure Amethyst that she was alright, but the look on the gem’s face just brought a fresh wave of agony because this was the only gem face Ruby had seen in five hundred and six years. “Sapphire,” she said. “I miss Sapphire.”

“Sapphire,” Amethyst said.

Ruby laughed, sniffed, scrubbed her eyes dry with the heels of her palm. “Yeah,” she said. “Sapphire’s my—my everything, I guess. Wanna hear some stories?”

Amethyst snuggled up to her, big eyes fixed on her face, and Ruby began to tell a story of how Sapphire had told off an amethyst (“One of your sisters,” Ruby said, and Amethyst cocked her head) who called sapphires weak and rubies useless.

“She’s beautiful, Amethyst,” Ruby sighed when the story was over. “I hope you get to meet her someday.”

“Hope meet her,” Amethyst said, and Ruby laughed in delight at the half-formed sentence.

About a month later, Ruby was chasing after Amethyst. The scrappy gem had caught sight of a clump of tumbleweed in the late evening glow, and was racing after it on all fours, laughing giddily. “Slow down!” Ruby called, laughing herself. “I’m not as fast as you!”

Then—

She heard a sound.

They weren’t alone.

“Who’s there?” she called, stopping abruptly, turning around. She heard Amethyst skid to a halt, run back, hug her from behind, climb up her though Ruby was smaller than she. “Show yourself!”

“Show yourself!” Amethyst mimicked.

Ruby took a few steps forward, summoned her gauntlet. That had been the sound of a warp, the Kindergarten warp that was only a few feet away, above them. She looked up. It could only be a Homeworld gem, returned to be sure the diamonds’ blast had worked, returned to start up the Kindergarten again, or it could be—

Ruby’s voice caught in her throat for a long time. The gem standing on the warp stared down at her, her words lost too.

But then energy flooded Ruby like she’d just reformed, and she raced closer with Amethyst still clinging to her back. “Sapphire!” she cried, tears flooding her eyes.

* * *

It had taken longer than Sapphire thought it would to find Ruby, she explained as they sat together around a fire, Amethyst close to Ruby’s side and watching Sapphire carefully. “My future vision isn’t very strong anymore,” Sapphire said. “There are…so many possibilities it’s like not having it at all.”

“You found me,” Ruby said. “You looked for me?”

Sapphire smiled. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready for so long.”

“It’s okay,” Ruby said, her gem hot with joy. “You’re here now.”

“Sapphire?” Amethyst asked, looking at Ruby.

“Sapphire,” Ruby said, nodding.

“You—you told her about me?” Sapphire asked in a small voice.

Ruby examined her. It had been over five hundred years, now, since they had left one another. In the grand scheme of things, that wasn’t so long, but it was just over half as much as the time they’d had together. Sapphire hadn’t once moved her bangs from her eye, and Ruby had the feeling that she hadn’t truly looked Ruby in the face since she arrived. She’d always been able to tell, somehow, where Sapphire was looking, _how_ she was looking. And now she was looking down, staring into the fire, if Ruby’s guess was right. She was the same, after all this time, and yet so different. She seemed…rusty. Like she hadn’t encountered any beings, any friends, either, like she’d been silent for almost all of her five hundred years alone.

“Yes,” Ruby said finally, carefully. “I told her…many stories.”

“Oh,” Sapphire whispered, folding her hands together.

Ruby hugged one knee to her chest. Amethyst mirrored her, ever the mimic. “You said you weren’t ready,” Ruby said, still careful. “Are you…are you sure you’re ready now?”

“No,” Sapphire said, and now she was looking at Ruby, Ruby knew it, and she felt something in her chest catch. “But if I keep waiting until I’m sure I might never come. And…” She stopped for a long time.

Ruby waited.

She would always wait for her Sapphire.

Sapphire slumped, just a bit, but on a gem whose posture was always so perfect it was like admitting defeat, like falling to the ground. “I missed you,” she whispered, her voice quiet so it wouldn’t break and it broke anyway. “I missed you so much.” She couldn’t look at Ruby again. It was too painful. She had _missed_ her, with such a hot burn sometimes she’d thought Ruby had been right there beside her. But that had been all her fault. She’d been the one to push Ruby away, to require space. She’d been the one who caused these five hundred years of agony.

The diamonds’ blast was, she still thought, somewhat her fault.

“I missed you too,” Ruby said.

And it was so simple, so _Ruby_ , so gentle, that Sapphire sniffed, began to cry. And Ruby reached out, over the flame, but hesitated because five centuries was nothing but five centuries was everything. Sapphire tried to scrub away the tears but they only came harder, faster, because she wanted Ruby to reach out and she didn’t, and she felt so torn apart by this and maybe she wasn’t ready, maybe she should just leave again—

But then she looked up.

And Ruby’s smile was patience. It was love. It was home.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, covering her face with both hands. “Sorry.”

Then there was a hand on her leg, but it wasn’t Ruby’s warmth. She looked up, surprised, to see the little amethyst crouched by her side. “It’s okay,” she said, patted Sapphire a couple times, gently, and Sapphire and Ruby laughed.

After that, after those first few almost-awkward weeks, things were…

Wonderful.

They shared stories, of the rabbits, of Silver, of the glass Ruby made and the civilizations Sapphire watched. Sapphire told Ruby of how she met Pearl, once, and Ruby smiled with shining eyes. Sapphire joined Ruby in teaching Amethyst, and the little gem made progress in her learning, slow though it was. There was a careful distance, a respect of years apart, between them, but it shrank at the speed of Amethyst’s growing understanding.

They closed it, in a rush, when Sapphire accidentally let out her self-blame for the corruption of their family.

“I saw Red, once,” Ruby said. It was a surreal night. The fire lit their faces, drew their half-unfocused gazes, and Amethyst was asleep with her head in Sapphire’s lap. They’d been quiet for a while, and then Ruby had spoken. “I had to poof her. And then I waited, cause I thought maybe she’d be back to normal…” She trailed off.

“She wasn’t?” Sapphire asked.

“She wasn’t.”

Sapphire clenched her folded hands together so hard they cramped. “I’m sorry.”

Ruby shrugged, eyes still on the fire, half-lidded. “It’s not your fault.”

“It is,” slipped through her lips, in a breath, in a thought, and Ruby’s eyes snapped up, snapped fully open, and she said, “What?”

Sapphire shook her head. “Nothing.”

“No,” Ruby said, almost sharply. “Not nothing. It’s not—Sapphire, why would you think Red being corrupted is your fault?”

“Isn’t it all my fault?” Sapphire asked, trying to fight back the anguish that wanted to whine out of her throat. “I should have seen, I should have known.”

And in a movement so fast Sapphire blinked and missed it, Ruby was beside her, hands on her arms, sliding down and tugging at her hands until they were held in Ruby’s, squeezing hard. “No,” she said, and the word was a low growl.

Amethyst shifted in her sleep, made a quiet sound. They froze, waited, then Ruby said again, more softly, “No.”

Sapphire took in a shaky, useless breath, and let it out, then tipped her head slowly, so slowly, onto Ruby’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No,” Ruby said.

And that was how they carried through the night, with Amethyst asleep, with their hands tight together, Sapphire’s face hidden from the world against Ruby’s shoulder. And the next morning, when Amethyst awoke, they pulled away and smiled at her, smiled at each other, and Ruby thought that the world wasn’t so lonely, when she had Sapphire and Amethyst.

Two weeks later—three months after Sapphire had arrived in the Kindergarten—they were outside, under the stars. They usually spent evenings and nights in the hollow of an emergence hole, especially when the wind blew dust into their faces and Amethyst complained. But it was a still, clear night, and so they sat together, with a small fire, and looked up. Ruby told the others of the constellations she’d found and created, and Sapphire told the others of the constellations she’d learned from civilizations she’d watched. Neither gem pointed out Homeworld.

Ruby smiled in contentment, flopped back onto the ground and gazed at the pinpricks of light. She would have gone to some of them, she knew, if she’d never met Sapphire or Rose or Pearl. She would have been sent to colonies as just one ruby guard amongst many. As it was, she had only been on Homeworld and Earth, would only ever be on Earth forever, and she did not mind at all.

Amethyst joined her, sending up a little puff of dirt and giggling. “Stars,” she said.

“Stars,” Ruby agreed.

Sapphire smiled at them. Ruby was beautiful, in the glow of the fire and the stars. Sapphire ached with it, ached with the missing that had been soothed, with the happiness, with the love. It grew in her, swelled, until she thought she’d float away with it, and she pressed both hands to her chest to feel it in its full.

Ruby glanced at Sapphire, and the smile on her lips shot straight to Ruby’s gem, making her smile broadly too.

This was perfect.

And then they heard a sound

They weren’t alone.

There was a great screech, and a great thundering, and then something was tearing towards them and Ruby and Sapphire stood and there was no time to think and they reached out at the same time towards each other and—

Home.

Love.

_Comfort._

In the split seconds of light, of nothingness, before coalescence and fight, Ruby and Sapphire felt all the emotions of the world come together in a single point. This was right.

It took more effort than they were used to to fuse, after so long apart. It took almost no effort to poof the corrupted gem (unfamiliar to her; most likely a Homeworld soldier), take her gently in un-gauntleted hands, and place her in a bubble a safe distance away.

It was only after that, when she’d regained her seat by the fire, that Garnet realized her hands were shaking.

Amethyst made a distressed sound, crawled into her lap, pawed gently at her visor and the tears slipping out from beneath it. She seemed not at all bothered by the fact that her companions of the past few months had been replaced with one gem, and Garnet laughed wetly, and pulled the little defective quartz closer, saying, “It’s alright, little one. I’m just—glad to be me.” She marveled at the sound of her own voice, and buried her face in the wild fluff of Amethyst’s hair, weeping with joy and loss and exhaustion and love.

After she had gathered herself (and after a few self-indulgent minutes of dissipating her visor and blinking one eye at a time to make Amethyst laugh), she stood with a new determination, and opened her third eye for the first time in over five hundred years.

It was time to find the rest of the Crystal Gems.


End file.
